Creative Soft Skills Erasmus Project

Project Title

Creative Soft Skills

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Creativity and culture; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Social entrepreneurship / social innovation

Project Summary

The importance of soft skills within the creative and cultural sector and within the labour market, in general, is a fact that has gained the recognition of the most important research centres, as well as, the most innovative companies in the world.
The project aims to produce a methodology able to identify, strengthen and recognize artists’ soft skills and facilitate the connection between artists and the labour market through the certification of creative soft skills.
The project is therefore directed to artists of any kind of art (from visual to classical arts) at the early stage of their career and organizations dedicated to training, developing and promoting artists with the objectives of:
– Supporting artists in developing new skills that create new job opportunities in non-creative contexts;
– Reinforcing their profile in terms of employability of their artistic profile and skills;
– Developing an innovative approach to recognize, develop and validate competencies in non-formal learning settings.

To achieve these objectives, the first activity will be a research aimed to establish the framework of creative soft skills within the Creative and Cultural Industries.
Each skill will be evaluated from an entrepreneurial and an artistic perspective (the artistic fields in which it is implemented, such as directing or conducting for management of leadership; the creation of a piece for creative thinking and problem-solving; the live performances for dealing with uncertainties, etc.).
The second activity will be the development of a methodology aimed to guide artists in the identification, exploitation and developing soft skills.
The methodology’s innovative quality is the adoption of Jungian archetypes as representations of soft skills.
The contents produced throughout the first two phases will be structured in an open source toolkit that aims to make the methodology accessible and replicable.
The toolkit represents a theoretical and practical base for the last phase of the Creative Soft Skills process that is the Certification of the artists’ soft skills.
The certification methodology provides mentoring, peer review and access to qualifications through a cluster of 1-1’s, in small groups or in larger groups in project-based learning and customised skills acquisition and development. Learners will access dynamic and complex professional contexts at the appropriate level for their competences with access to supervision and mentoring support to reflect on further development needs, newly acquired skills and, effectively applied knowledge and skills across a range of different situations.
The training provided during the pilots and the training at a national level will involve learners in delivering projects that integrate the skill-sets and enable the reflection on the skills developed and the collection and mapping of pieces of evidence to demonstrate skill-sets applied in the project at the appropriate level.
The project is conceived as an international programme that operates at local and international level connecting learners to professionals within the industry. In this way, it forges an international and interdisciplinary community network that connects local and international employees, freelancers, volunteers, business owners and managers from different sectors and countries to each other. These connections enable detailed conversations about practice and practice-based learning. These conversations are usually multi-disciplinary, transnational and highlight common shared experience and give awareness of broader or newer perspectives among professionals and pre-professionals.
The aim is to provide a more socially-inclusive community of experts and to create a level-playing field based on the effective application of skills and knowledge gained in a broad cross-section of pre-professional settings. We aim to encourage and enable access to more pre-professional opportunities for those individuals outside traditional or narrow pathways and insider networks.
In the long term, the project aims to disseminate across Europe an innovative tool that could increase job opportunities for artists, reinforce the organizations dedicated to training and promotion of artists, encourage creative practices that involve artists within companies.

Project Website

http://www.creativesoftskills.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 246022,4 Eur

Project Coordinator

Stichting Kunstbedrijf Arnhem & Country: NL

Project Partners

• Cultural Innovation Competence Centre Association
• ASSOCIATION KULTURANOVA UDRUZENJE
• RINOVA LIMITED
• CONSORZIO MATERAHUB INDUSTRIE CULTURALI E CREATIVE SCARL
• KAAKKOIS-SUOMEN AMMATTIKORKEAKOULU OY
• SINEGLOSSA